UPDATED, Monday Final: While audiences anxiously await Avengers: Infinity War to kick-start the summer on Friday (it’s expected to be a box office gem), AQuiet Place took the top spot in its third weekend as two comedies — IFeel Pretty and Super Troopers 2 — and the dark thriller Traffik debuted. A Quiet Place grossed $20.9M, while Rampage came in with $20M to grab the No. 2 spot in its second frame.

Of the newbies, the Amy Schumer comedy I Feel Pretty ended the weekend with $16M ($3.5M under her 2017 gilm Snatched), while the Super Troopers sequel more than doubled its estimates to an arresting $15.18M. Traffik came in at $3.9M.

Before Avengers comes into play, the calendar year-to-date is off by 2.3% from last year. That all should change next weekend. Here is the final box office chart:

PREVIOUSLY, Sunday 8:36 AM: Paramount’s A Quiet Placeis still the prime destination for moviegoers this weekend in its third go-round with a $9.3M Saturday ( +46% over Friday) and a 3-day of $21.7M and a running cume of $131.1M by EOD. The takeaway here, much like as we saw with Get Out, is that when an original, riveting feature is positioned right in the marketplace, it can truly connect. Audiences are smarter; they know hacky fare when they see it, and they’ll get out of the house to watch a movie on the big screen when it’s truly unique, and A Quiet Place is that twist in the thriller genre space.

Meanwhile, family matinees have been spiking New Line’s Rampageto second place with $20.7M, a -42% ease. The Dwayne Johnson movie drew $9.1M on Saturday, a big +82% jump over Friday and will see a 10-day total of $66M by end of today. As we mentioned last weekend, the star has an innate ability to quietly but steadily push his all-audience pics to high numbers. Rampage also has the 3D Imax element, which is undoubtedly fueling its grosses. Added to that is that its multi-cultural appeal, particularly in the West and South, is very strong.

While A Quiet Place and Rampage could end up closer depending on what happens today, the horror film is still on track for the No. 1 spot. This weekend, Rampage does not have its hefty $2.4M preview numbers wrapped in; A Quiet Place has been dropping about 35% on Sundays. Even if it dropped further today to, say, 40% and Rampage had a lesser-than-expected drop, the race for No. 1 would be closer, but A Quiet Place right now is about $1.6M to $1.7M ahead of the Dwayne Johnson picture. Last weekend, the story on these two rivals wasn’t told until we saw Sunday’s numbers. Rampage is playing to families and both Saturday and Sunday are big days at the movies for that audience segment.

Meanwhile STXfilms’ I Feel Pretty has slowed down with a -6% Saturday for a $15.8Mto $16.1M opening, making it the smallest debut out of Amy Schumer’s movie-star trio: Trainwreck ($30M) and Snatched ($19.5M). Schumer didn’t write this movie, which was the case with Trainwreck, but nonetheless it’s not causing a stampede of females to come out.

STXfilms is always keen to defend the frugality and economics of their movies, and in this case they contend they only have a 50% exposure on combined acquisition and P&A expenses of $45M, however one film finance executive exclaimed last night to Deadline, “Tough to see how this picture breaks even…STX will need to have net revenue of ~$53mm plus interest from all domestic markets to avoid losing money.” While Bad Moms dialed into matriarchs’ release of stress and spoke to many, it’s conceivable that the studio saw an opportunity here to pick-up a star-driven comedy that they felt would potentially resonate with young females struggling with their insecurities.

Some of the hurdles here with I Feel Pretty is that some feel it’s a one-joke movie with New York Times criticManohla Dargis writing, “(Schumer) is such a force for good — for comedy, for women — and the laughs land often enough that you can go, if somewhat begrudgingly, with the messy flow. But dear lord she needs to work with better material, with funnier, sharper, far smarter scripts and with directors who can do something, anything, with the camera.” And even though audiences have a good time with this movie once they’re inside the theater, one of the challenges that some feminists are having in regards to buying tickets, judging by the take of UK-based podcaster Sofie Hagen, is believing the premise. “Who is this meant to resonate with? Before we can enjoy the premise, surely we have to buy into the fact that she is not pretty. How many of us are bigger than her? Are we supposed to accept that THIS is ugly when it’s all we’ve been taught that we should aim for?” Hagen tweeted.

So the new Amy Schumer movie is about a woman who is half an inch from being conventionally Hollywood attractive (but rest-of-the-world attractive) who thinks she's rest-of-the-world-attractive? I have never been more confused in my life.

Then again, maybe this has something to do with the P&A spend. STXfilms prides itself on being responsible with its dollars, and in this case P&A was around an estimated $30M. If Uni spent $40M-$50M stateside to get Blockers to a $20M+ opening, perhaps that should have been the case here so this Schumer comedy could leg out in the upcoming, fierce Avengers: Infinity War marketplace next weekend (est. opening $220M+).

Now, even though Fox Searchlight’s Super Troopers 2 is cruising in lower than its early Saturday forecast with $14.9M in 4th, it’s still commendable because no one was expecting this crowdfunded, cult comedy sequel to over-index. As expected, because of 4/20 stoner crowds, Super Troopers 2 was front-loaded, drawing $4.39M on Saturday, -45%. This is more a win over I Feel Pretty because of its financial structure: Super Troopers 2 was made for an estimated $5M before P&A, while the Schumer comedy cost $32M, with STX taking stateside rights for $15M.

Still, this was picture that was expected in between $5M and $6M going into the weekend. Frank Rodriguez, head of distribution at Fox Searchlight, credited the marketing department at FSL as well as the distribution department at Fox who distributed for FSL as they were working Isle of Dogs as well as the Broken Lizard comedy troupe for working their badges off to open the film. “The Broken Lizard comedy troupe toured in 14 markets around the country and worked so hard,” he said. “They’ve been waiting for 17 years to bring this picture out this weekend. When we were looking at these numbers Thursday night, we thought maybe it would get to $750K and then when it took in $1.35M, we knew we had something great. We expected it to drop on Saturday night. The 4:20 playdate was a very important thing not only to Broken Lizard but distribution made sure to run the double feature.”

Because the first Super Troopers was 17 years earlier, Fox (which has an open schedule until Deadpool 2 arrives on May 18) did double features in roughly 925 of its theaters. It had worked this same strategy before with great success during the Planet of the Apes run.

Fox Searchlight also partnered with comedy writers to develop a long lead digital campaign. It’s Mustache You A Question social media campaign was particularly good as it had Q&A with the IP’s avid fan base. How avid? It generated a total of 3.5M views. And when they released their teaser to its crowd-funded backers and fan base, it racked up 6.5M views within a 24-hour time period. It’s no surprise that the largest segment of the moviegoing audience for this comedy were guys (64%) between the ages of 25-49 (75%).

So, that kind of begs the question, will Fox add theaters next week when Avengers: Infinity War takes the country by storm? We received a definite maybe. They hope to do just that.

Speaking of FSL, its stop-motion-animated film Isle of Dogs expanded to its widest point this weekend (1,947 locations) and will gross $3.4M to $3.6M this weekend for a per screen average of about $1,746 to $1,848. The cumulative total for the Wes Anderson-directed film has now reached $24.5M. With that gross, it has already surpassed Fox’s previous stop-motion pic, Fantastic Mr. Fox ($21M).

The film is still gaining its strongest appeal from moviegoers 18-34 years of age, and has continued to draw best in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Houston and Austin. The cast includes Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, and Frances McDormand, among others.

The other newbie was Universal/Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare takes 5th place with a $3.4M Saturday, +39% and a $7.9M second weekend, -58% for a 10-day take of $30.4M.

Lionsgate/Code Black’s Traffikdrew $1.5M on Saturday and will open to $3.8M.

Anthony D’Alessandro wrote the early Sunday update. Anita Busch will provide further Sunday box office analysis later today.

UPDATE, Saturday AM: Paramount’s A Quiet Placein its third week prevails with $21.1M over a weekend filled with comedy both for women with STXfilms/Voltage/Wonderland Sound and Vision’s I Feel Pretty($18M) and stoners with Fox Searchlight’s surprise sequel, Super Troopers 2 ($16M).

While I Feel Pretty is ahead of its $11M-$14M tracking, Super Troopers 2 is really ahead, besting its $5M-7M projection. Said one happy Fox insider, “You can never tell with fan-based properties and how rabid they are” about the results of the Vermont cop comedy. However, despite winning Friday with an estimated $7.7M, analysts expect fans to release themselves from Super Troopers 2 in the same way that genre fans do on a Saturday with an anticipated decline of -30% today. The sequel cost a modest $5M (before P&A), which was largely raised through Indiegogo crowdfunding by the pic’s comedy group Broken Lizard (the second-best crowdfunding effort ever with $4.6M). Searchlight gets to release the title, given how they’ve owned the franchise, having bought the first movie at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival for a reported $3.25M, a similar amount to what Super Troopers cost. Released in February 2002, Super Troopers ultimately made $18.4M at the domestic B.O. and (wow) $60M in VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray rental revenue according to ComScore — and that’s not even counting sales. The risk for a sequel: Was there even an audience 17 years later? The inclination was ‘yes’; Broken Lizards member Steve Lemme shared with Rolling Stone that ten years ago he was let out of a speeding ticket because the police officer was a fan of Super Troopers. Searchlight let the gang proceed, and would give the sequel a wide release, but Broken Lizard had to come up with the money.

It’s just a testament that if you want to wow with a comedy at the box office nowadays, you have to make them with a similar shoestring economics that Blumhouse makes its horror fare. That’s a hard feat for many studios to pull off, given how comedies are built around stars whereas genre titles are driven by concept.

RelishMix reports that even though I Feel Pretty is overpowering Super Troopers 2 in social media metrics with universes of 141.6M to 83.4M, the stoner comedy “has the potential to surprise traditional tracking if preview chatter erupts across the social web.” And that just happened. From the minute Broken Lizard began crowdfunding, the clock started in regards to promoting Super Troopers 2 with that video trailer earning 3.8M views on YouTube. Fox Searchlight also partnered with online comedy writers to develop a long lead digital campaign. A “Save the Date” teaser was released Aug. 28 and generated 6.5M views in the first 24 hours. A Movember campaign “Mustache You a Question” on social, comprised of weekly talent Q&As with fans, yielded 3.5M views. Broken Lizard also tourned 14 big city markets including Burlington, VT with Q&A screenings, bar appearances and throwing out pitches at several MLB games. Broken Lizard also grand marshaled the Nascar Auto 400 Race in Fontana CA on 3/18 (which aired on Fox National). Co-branded national partnerships with Arby’s, Hooters, Lyft, Totino’s, Trimino, Turo and Zumiez. Of course, the biggest tie-in was that 4/20 stoner release date.

Super Troopers 2‘s audience as made up of 63% guys, who gave the film an A-. Those under 18 who sneaked into this R-rated comedy came out at 2% and gave the Broken Lizard pic an A+. Overall, moviegoers over 25 filled seats at 81% giving Super Troopers 2 a B+. Fifty-six percent of the audience bought tickets because of the subject matter, that being Super Troopers.

STXfilms

I Feel Pretty‘s results are alright, however, a $20M-plus opening would be one to shout about in this parched environment for star-driven comedies. We’ll see what happens tonight as analysts expect a 15% Saturday surge on the pic. Maybe it over-indexes. Critics weren’t kind to Amy Schumer’s latest (35% Rotten) nor Super Troopers 2 (33% Rotten), but audiences gave both pics a B+ CinemaScore, which isn’t shabby. Financially speaking, fans are bailing out Super Troopers 2 which was made for a song. By comparison, I Feel Pretty carries a $32M budget financed via Voltage and Wonderland Sound and Vision with STXfilms shelling out an estimated $15M for U.S. and another estimated $30M for P&A. STXfilms claims that their exposure is roughly 50% of that $45M combined nut, but what the town wants to see here is a major win for the genre (much like STX did with the first Bad Moms at $23M-plus) in these streaming times and the opening right now is between Game Night ($17M)and Uni’s Blockers ($20.6M). We’ve heard that some exhibitors felt that I Feel Pretty was a one-joke movie, while insiders have informed us that test screenings went quite well, evident in the CinemaScore. However given the huge launch that Schumer received with her first film Trainwreck ($30M opening, $110.2M domestic, $140.8M off a $35M budget)— which she actually wrote (she didn’t write I Feel Pretty or last year’s Snatched) — there’s something to be said about partnering with Judd Apatow to create the quintessential character-driven raunchy comedy. Great reviews, which Trainwreck received at 86% fresh, could have sent I Feel Pretty to another B.O. level. Currently, I Feel Pretty is coming in behind Trainwreck and last year’s Snatched ($19.5M opening, $45.8M domestic).

Females turned out at 78% according to CinemaScore giving I Feel Pretty a B+. The pic was rated PG-13 to grab a wider audience and the under 18 set showed up at 11% giving the Schumer pic an A+. Eighty-one percent were over 25 and 55% of the crowd bought tickets because they were Schumer fans; they gave the movie a B+ too.

Lionsgate

Lionsgate/Code Black’s thriller Traffik is build to be an ancillary play by which a theatrical release triggers downstream revenues, while zeroing in on the African American demo. It’s a business plan not unlike to what Orion and BH Tilt are exercising. The movie starring Paula Patton and Omar Epps was picked up by Code Black last September for a very low acquisition and the comp here was their The Perfect Match which debuted to $4.3M and made close to $10M. P&A is always efficient and in this case there was primarily a digital push for Traffik via the studio’s social media channels with Codeblack Facebook fans counting 6M and Traffik trailer views across all platforms pulling in 30M. Deadline is informed that the pic stands to make $2M if it legs out to $8M-$10m. In the history of being with Lionsgate, Code Black titles have never lost the studio money.

Saturday AM update written by Anthony D’Alessandro

UPDATED writethru, 12:30 PM: The matinee numbers are now coming in for the three new titles opening this weekend, two comedies and one dark thriller with surprises all around. Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty, which grabbed $1M in previews last night looks to take in around $20M for the three-day and is competing right now with last weekend’s A Quiet Place for No. 1. The horror thriller also looks like $20M weekend after a $6M Friday.

I Feel Pretty is on its way to an estimated $7M gross today. The performance of I Feel Pretty is right in line with Schumer’s previous comedy outing Snatched which debuted to $19.5M last year.

Super Troopers 2 is just jamming right now, having nailed down $1.35M in previews and now looks to more than double its previous estimate for its three-day with $15M. Fox intiated double features in 900+ theaters for die hards who wanted to see the 2001 movie again. Good idea to remind people of what they loved about the film 17 years ago. It is on track for a $7M Friday as well.

And where is last weekend’s No. 1 movie Rampage? Based on matinees, the Dwayne Johnson popcorn movie may swing in with $5M and a three-day of around $16M. A week ago, it was in a battle with A Quiet Place and pulled ahead at the end due to a stronger than expected Sunday.

PREVIOUSLY, 7:44 AM: The preview numbers are in for the three new films debuting this weekend at the domestic box office: the Amy Schumer comedy I Feel Pretty, Super Troopers 2 and the human-trafficking thriller Traffik about.

STXfilms

I Feel Pretty from STXfilms danced to a Thursday night preview take of $1 million after releasing into roughly 2,600 theaters at 7 PM. For comps, the Schumer-led comedy Snatched grabbed $650,000 in previews last year and went on to a three-day of $19.5M. I Feel Pretty, financed by Voltage Pictures and produced by it and Wonderland Sound and Vision, is still on track to open around $15M this weekend as it rolls out to 3,440 locations.

Grosses came in earlier this morning for the guy-driven comedy SuperTroopers 2, whichnabbed a big $1.35M in tickets last night as the sequel to the 2001 comedy cult film enjoyed double features in 925 of its 1,850 theaters. The film is off to a bang-up start; its comp is Blockers, which also grossed $1.5M in previews ahead of a $20M opening. Super Troopers 2 is now expected to do much better than the $6M that was estimated.

Broken Lizard

Previews started at 4:20 PM for the Broken Lizard fans as the crowdfunded film was written by (and stars) the comedy team’s Jay Chandrasekhar (who helmed), Brian Cox, Kevin Heffernan,

Steve Leme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske.

The first film chased in $18.4M all in domestically after a February opening weekend of $6.2M. SuperTroopers 2 is a Fox Searchlight film distributed by Fox. It goes wide in 2,037 locations today. There are a whopping 43 producers on this film — about the same as the population of Fenwick, CT and close to the number of presidents of marketing currently at Fox — and the producing titles are of varying types: exec producers, co-exec producers, associate producers, co-associate producers, producers, co-producers and even co-associate producers. Hello, crowdfunders.

In 900 locations, Lionsgate and Codeblack Films’ Traffik previews started at 7 PM last night to bring in $225K; it will head into 1,046 locations today. Lionsgate expects the R-rated thriller to grab about $3M-$4M thru Sunday, or a per screen comparable to the launch of Lionsgate/Codeblack’s The Perfect Match, which opened to $4.3M in March 2016. That would put the Traffik debut comps similarly to Deon Taylor’s Meet the Blacks, which picked up $200K in Thursday previews in April 2016 and went on to gross a three-day of $4M. Traffik was acquired by Codeblack last September.

As a rule of thumb, usually previews signal about 9% of a picture’s three-day take. However, that errors when the movies are smaller and it varies from picture to picture. But at the studios, distribution experts usually look at the preview numbers as about 9% of what the picture will ultimately accomplish for the debut weekend.

How important are Thursday night previews? Well, it mattered last weekend in the race to No. 1 with the $2.4M New Line/Warner Bros. pulled in last Thursday night in previews which helped Rampage at least for a night against A Quiet Place.

We’re hearing now that A Quiet Place could win the No. 1 spot this weekend. Through the week, A Quiet Place grabbed $8M thru Wednesday night and Rampage grossed $7.9M so it is very close.

In terms of social media, I Feel Pretty has a strong Social Media Universe of 141.6M, according to RelishMix. This Amy Schumer comedy’s SMU is composed of 11M Facebook fans, over 39M FB views, 7.1M Twitter followers, more than 52.5M YouTube views and 32M Instagram followers.

The real social star of I Feel Pretty is Emily Ratajkowski who many fans know mostly from Robin Thicke’s music video; she has 24.5M fans/followers. Schumer is also all in and very engaged in the promotion of the film. From social posts to re-posting of her many recent interviews from the film, Schumer is working it to raise awareness through her fan base of 14.1M. Finally, Busy Philipps is also promoting the movie well to her 1.2M followers/fans.

There are positive and negative sentiments in the conversation surrounding this film from glad that Schumer is taking on body type issues and at the same time saying that there is a tone deafness to the film in this current environment and there is a preachiness to it.

Super Troopers 2 has a good SMU of 83.4 heading into opening weekend. This R-rated comedy’s total Social Media Universe is a combination of 5.2M Facebook fans, 31M Facebook views, 6.1M Twitter followers, 38.5M YouTube views and 2.6M Instagram followers.

This sequel to the 2001 sleeper hit, most of its money was made in the home video market of its day, has a mixed score for key social measures. Starting with EOR (viral rate), Super Troopers 2 scores a 7:1, which is behind the usual rated R comedy’s 12:1 earned/owned ratio. Also, its SMU of 83.4M falls short of the genre’s average 123M, but Troopers 2 is earning 2.2K daily Facebook fans, which bests the typical 1.4K. And, leading into opening week, the movie’s daily average YouTube views are coming in at 78K, which far exceeds the standard 23K.

This thriller starring Paula Patton and Omar Epps is moderate when looking at key social metrics, starting with the movie’s EOR. A standard film in the genre has a 24:1 ratio, but Traffik is scoring well below with a 4:1. Also, this film’s daily FB fans are about 200, but the standard is 1.8K. Finally, Traffik’s daily average YT views are a little over 4K, not the typical 27K.

Omar Epps is the social star of this drama thriller with a social media universe of 3.5M fans/followers and he is a marketer’s dream, consistently posting Traffik materials and has even plastered the film’s poster across his official headers.

Roselyn Sanchez is also very socially active, posting from the press tour and even alerting her 3.1M fans/followers to pop star Joelle James’ song for the soundtrack. Even star Paula Patton (with an SMU of 1.2M) is getting into the act, sharing her press tour experience and new blonde look.

Kudos to the cast and the marketers for being able to pinpoint the film’s target audience who are engaged. The downside to that is that the commenters are saying they’ve seen this movie when it was called Get Out, The Strangers and even The Purge series.

Others are really turned off by the violence, and feel like the complex issue of human trafficking is given a disservice with such a campy looking Hollywood thriller. Still, others are saying that they feel like the movie’s materials conjure up anti-white sentiment, as the bad guys in the film seem racist and violent – much like Get Out.